Guest Commentary

Public officials now admit they can see how you voted and link it to your name. This issue affects Colorado, almost all of Washington State, as well as some locations in California, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia and likely other states as well.

If you vote by mail or at combined-precinct "vote centers" your vote may be viewable by public officials and/or vendors.

You may be hearing lately that the problem with Iowa caucuses (reported the wrong result, "lost" results) and Nevada (more votes than voters, took stupidly long to count a one-race ballot) were due to "amateurs." But have you heard that Nevada and Iowa hired professionals to run the the caucus?

You might just raise one eyebrow with that; you might just say, "Sheesh. Won't hire those guys again." But then comes conflict of interest. It turns out that at least three of the top guns listed below had been involved in the campaign of a single top candidate, and then went on to run the (botched, but beneficially so) caucuses.

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company.

When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.

Conceals vote-counting from the public, in violation of Article 32 of its own Constitution.

Removed candidate recount rights (2009).

Made it illegal for public citizens or members of the press to examine the ballots after the election is over (2003)

TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO

Get involved with Protect the Count NH or Watch the Vote 2012 (links below).

Monitor the trap doors WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE'S FIRST-IN-NATION PRIMARY? Like the Iowa caucus system, it forces candidates to answer real questions from actual people. Political strategists like their candidates to plan their media (setting up media ops that are nothing short of laughable; placing their candidates in cornfields, in tanks, on factory assembly lines, donning catcher's mitts and plaid shirts and baseball caps.) Unscripted moments are forced on candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, where locals won't vote-ya if you hide behind photo ops.